I’m now about 5 weeks into a 13 week accelerator program at Hack Reactor in San Francisco. It’s been a blast drinking from the firehose of programming knowledge available there. Though I’ve been working in technology for quite a while, I’ve rarely taken much time to sit down and write about it. I’ve been learning and doing so much hear, I can no longer hold back. So I’ve created a separate blog to have a place to write about and share some of my programming and technological adventure.

I’m leaving my employer, Silverpop, at the end of May and starting in June I will begin studying with an intense, 3 month, 70hr/week, code accelerator program in San Francisco called Hack Reactor.

This has been a tough decision for a number of reasons. First, Silverpop has been great to me. In the six years I’ve been with the company I’ve really grown with them and helped them to grow as well. When I started the product was largely focused on email sending, the company had around 100 employees, and I was single. In the course of my six year tenure I’ve shepherded the majority of the UX projects in the product for it to become a full-scale marketing automation suite. The company grew to over 500 employees worldwide. And I grew to having an amazing wife and beautiful daughter.

I’m taking this career leap because I believe it’s time. My family and I are ready for a new challenge and a new adventure. If I look at the market and my career options from here I can see there is a lot to be gained by combining my user experience design and testing experience with the ability to realize those designs in software. Having that combination is likely to make me a strong addition to the kinds of highly-skilled cross-functional teams that are building the amazing products we’ve all come to love.

Making the decision to leave Silverpop and spend my savings was difficult. However, the hardest part was knowing that I’ll largely be apart from my wife and child for the three months of this program. But this is the right choice for all of us. As Marie and I have discussed, there’s never going to be a better time to try something of this magnitude than right now. We know that pursuing a dream like this can make me a better father, example to my child, and provider for our family.

Now that the decision has been made and the deposit paid, the hard work has only just begun. The program requires completing an extensive pre-work project prior to be start of classes. I’m highly motivated because there’s a lot riding on this, not just for me, but for Marie and Rosalie as well.

Thanks to everyone who has given of their time and consideration to support me getting to this point. I beg your continued patience as I focus on this next major career / life change.